Surgical suture material is used in the form of threads reinforced with needles, i.e. needle-thread combinations, and optionally also in the form of individual threads in pre-cut lengths. Various types of material are available for the threads, such as for example silk, polyamides, polypropylene or woven polyesters and resorbable materials, in various thread thicknesses and thread lengths. The threads can be connected with a number of different straight and bent needles which differ in needle size, needle thickness and type of section.
The package of surgical suture material has to guarantee that the contents remain safe and sterile. Usually, a sterile inner package is enclosed by an outer cover which keeps the inner package sterile until it is torn open and removed during an operation. The inner package, which is described in the following as "package", should allow the surgical suture material to be removed rapidly and without complication. In particular, the thread to be removed should not become entangled or entwined, and moreover, it is to be ensured that the thread, after its removal, does not have a tendency to return to the shape in which it was positioned in the package ("thread memory").
U.S. Pat. No. 3,985,227 shows a package for needle-thread combinations which satisfies these requirements by having several needle-thread combinations arranged spaced apart in parallel and storing them lengthwise in a folding package, without them being kinked in the process. Kinks or other deformations in the thread, which promote the thread memory effect, are avoided in this way. Nor can the thread thus become entangled. For removal, the thread is pulled out from the upper end of the folding package.
It is a disadvantage with this previously known package that, because of the type of storage, the longitudinal dimension of the package must be greater than the length of the needle-thread combinations stored therein, as a result of which the package becomes very unwieldy or the length of the thread is limited.